The Mixtape Jones Report: One Man, One Record Collection.

This is a blog about me getting to know my record collection better, adding records to it, making mixtapes, and any other musical ephemera I choose to write about. I am a musician myself, as is my wife, so commentary/information about that will probably bleed over into this blog.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Hey kids. If you're reading this, that means that this blog has officially RELOCATED. Yes, now that the new Dr. Pants Website is up and running, we decided that this blog (now re-christened The Pants Report) can live on the same domain as the rest of Dr. Pants world. So go ahead and click one of the text links you just read over, or click the title of this blog entry, and resume your ravenous consumption of this piece of essential bloggy internet stuff at its new location. See y'all over there. Peace out.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Dustin struggled to breathe through the mist of spray-tan. David was already unconscious. Kenneth was prostrate and prone. And now, the lights in Dustin’s eyes began to fade. He wondered, possibly a final thought: How had they gotten the drop on them?

After enjoying a brunch of donuts, the trio had returned to the Dr. Pants Medical Funk Facility, eager to begin the search for a new bassist. But something was amiss. As the doors swung open, they didn’t hear the usual soundtrack that P.A.N-T.S. would choose, but the deep thump of house music. The air was thick with...something.

“P.A.N-T.S.?” David shouted, expecting the computer’s reply.

Kenneth and Dustin looked at one another. They’d never had a problem with the Personal Android Nano-Tech System before--except for that time it went evil and kept re-mixing their albums as nu-metal. But after the last logic upgrade, it was working perfectly.

“This has to be a joke, right?” asked Dustin. “I thought we agreed not to install a personality, because that’s always what happens in the movies right before a sentient computer tries to kill everybody.”

In the shadows, they heard a giggle and the shuffle of tiny feet. They swung around, but found their bodies would barely respond.

“I’m moving so slow,” Kenneth said. “It’s like walking in molasses.”

Now the tittering came from behind them. And from the left and right. Dressed in skin-tight glittering faux-leather, the tiny orange forms of the Guido-loompas emerged and surrounded them. Their eyes, as always, were covered in sunglasses.

“Yo. Yo. Yo.”

They spoke the same syllable over and over again, as always. The Guido-loompas never said anything else, but there was menace behind the word. How long had they been trying to kill the band?

And now they had drugged them with some sort of aerosol party cocktail, no doubt to make it easier to bronzer them to death.

But just as Dustin had held on the longest, he was also the first to draw in the first sweet breaths of air after his orange shell had been cracked. He blinked and began to make out shadows in the sunlight of a figure waking his friends.

The haze cleared and he looked around. They were outside the Funk Facility, a trail of unconscious Guido-loompas leading out the front door, ending a few feet away. “What...what...” David struggled to say.

“I came for the audition and found you guys being spray-tanned by these goofy midgets,” said the man. “I fought them off with my bass and dragged you outside before the fumes got to me. I’m Devin, by the way.”

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The hulking 9-foot frame of Log-sack loomed in the doorway, towering over the band. So large, he seemed to swallow up their entire field of vision, but in a crack between his massive arms and inhuman torso, they could see the bound and gagged figure of Kenneth behind him.

This was not the Log-sack they had known. Half Kenny Loggins, half John Cusack, the composite man had been a friend to them in the past. His back bore the brunt of the collapsing roof when an earthquake hit Dr. Pants Medical Funk Facility. He helped fight against the abomination Cussina (half Joan Cusack, half Jimmy Messina) when it sought to disrupt a studio recording.

But now, the easy half-smiles of the star of “Better Off Dead” and the singer of “Danger Zone” were aligned in a frown.

“What are you doing with Kenneth?” asked David. “Have you hurt him, Log-sack?”

His tree-limb arm came crashing down, knocking the band off their feet. He lumbered forward and as the lamp swung across the ceiling, it illuminated the swirling logo of their nemesis, the diabolical Professor Tornado, seared into his chest.

“Tornado’s gotten to him,” Dustin shouted. “Argh! If only he was more Cusack than Loggins. Then maybe he wouldn’t be so conflicted!”

The beast, confused by the notion that Loggins might somehow be less conflicted than Cusack, didn’t notice Aaron reaching into his pocket and pulling out his box cutter. It would be useless against the nigh-invincible might of Log-sack, but maybe...just maybe...if he could throw it to Kenneth, he could slice through his bonds and begin work on the beast’s one weakness: a funky beat...

The box cutter barely made it over Log-sack’s shoulder, in the narrow space between his mountainous body and the ceiling, landing inches away from Kenneth. His eyes, red like the Danger Zone, swung to Aaron and with a voice much like that of a movie star, Log-sack bellowed. He turned away from David and Dustin, allowing them to aid their captive friend, but in the blink of an eye, he lunged.

Aaron, screaming, was caught in the unbreakable grip of Log-sack’s arms. But it lasted only a moment. The screaming stopped and the creature let his prey fall lifeless to the floor.

Behind the beast’s back, the rest of the band exchanged mournful looks. They really needed to find a new bass player.

“THIS makes you wish they’d never been mutated from our blood samples? THIS? Not the 800 other times we’ve had to fight them?” Dustin asked incredulously. “I don’t care if they loved us and bought us candy, I still wish they didn’t exist. They give me the creeps.”

Kenneth coughed sheepishly. It had been his trials of the Pants 4000 DNA testing kit/amp that accidentally created their wayward twins.

The band couldn’t argue with that. Risking their lives wasn’t always fun. Saving Oklahoma City from robot spiders and amorous pigs wasn’t easy. But at least they got some cool music out of the deal.

Aaron looked at his bandmates, perplexed.

“Wait, did you guys get hit by all those exploding chickens? Didn’t the velvet blankets shield you?”

Dustin removed a beak from his pocket and then pointed to his wedding ring. David and Kenneth did the same.

“We’re all married, dude, remember?” asked Dustin. “So, while you were hiding in bed with the Doppel-groupies, we were remaining faithful to our ladies and dodging raw chicken thighs. Where’d they go, anyway?”

The Doppel-groupies, like the Doppelgangers, had fled the scene once the poultry started popping. And with them went the secret location of Dr. Pants, their mentor and legal guardian, if the boasts in their ransom letter were true.

David wandered about with his cellphone up in the air, searching for a signal.

“Anyone know where those crazy bastards have left us this time?”

“Mmmm, probably southside,” said Kenneth, consulting his GPS. “Yep. South Penn. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

The men nodded silently. They would look for an exit. They would call for a ride. And then they would get some donuts.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Sometimes it becomes clear to me that there are forces in the world that are out to break me and make all that I find joyful turn to misery.

Not the most positive way to start a blog entry about my recent, absolutely amazing trip to Italy with my wife and her parents. I am aware of this. Still, when you can get outside your normal life and routine and look at things from the outside a bit, certain things become crystal clear.

Many times we take vacations to renew ourselves…or allow ourselves to be renewed. Even if we don’t know that’s why we do it, it’s still probably why we do it. I have been in desperate, desperate need of renewal. The many journeys K.C. and I take on the road playing music do not renew me. I suppose they could, if I allowed them to sometimes. I have been in quite a dark place recently, I think. Darker than I really had realized or imagined. It is only in the light of this amazing vacation and what I’ve allowed it to show me and do to me have I become aware of this. Some of you might be saying, “Well, of course you feel better. You’re in ITALY.” It’s not always that easy, though. There have been moments on this amazing journey where I’ve been a bit too jammed up with worrying about things at home, etc. to really enjoy the moment. As I type this, I have arrived at a place where that’s not the case, at least for now.

We give ourselves over in slavery to so many things. There are many days where I am not too far from believing the adage from “Fight Club”: “Do you own your possessions, or do your possessions own you?” I don’t know that it is only my possessions that have owned me lately. I have been owned by my own fear, my own ambition (which can be a dangerous thing…how much of our own ambition is grown out of fear that we will NOT amount to a point that is satisfactory to us? Can we not trust that God/The Universe/whatever has a plan that will be perfect in the long run?).

I have also been impaired in my enjoyment of music lately. My ability to really enjoy listening has been quite affected. I need to utilize it as the symptom it is more often…I should know by now that if the music is largely not pleasurable/interesting and more frustrating/befuddling, it’s a sign that all is not well in my mind and heart.

I am so proud of this record that we’ve made, the new Dr. Pants EP (the 1st of 4), but the truth is I can’t control what anybody thinks of it or what the world does with it. It’s not my job to, either. I desperately want to believe that great music will make room for itself…but it doesn’t always work this way. The truth is that Dr. Pants is probably destined to be a cult band, and the cult is still finding us. I’m so grateful for the people who have discovered the music over the last few years and have really connected with it. I pray that I am more grateful for that every day than I was the previous day. I also have felt so desperate financially…it’s interesting that, even though this entire trip was paid for by my in-laws (an amazing, amazing thing), it’s been good to give up control of the money. I’m not in control of the money. I can’t even try to pay for anything, because I don’t have a single Euro of my own in my pocket. That’s a little different. It’s like, “Just stand back and be blessed, because there’s nothing you can do about it.” Pretty humbling on some level.

I’m so glad for the moments I’ve had on the plane ride over, and the trains throughout Italy, to listen to entire records on my iPod, and to just sit and enjoy. It’s pretty much all been entire records that I’m not very familiar with…I’ve even listened to a few things for the first time ever, start-to-finish. Of course, as I’ve been in Italy, my mind has been its own jukebox as well. Certain tracks come irresistibly to mind (how can one walk around the city of Firenze, as the Italians call it, and not think of “You Enjoy Myself” by Phish?), and others from the plane ride over stick in my head and, for whatever reason, become cornerstone songs to my own personal soundtrack for the trip (both “Broken” and “Rhinestone Eyes” by Gorillaz). Something about being in a foreign country, outside one’s own home, opens the ears. I don’t know what it is. I think I have just been approaching a sort of potential burnout with work in general…including the radio show. Now, though, I don’t feel that way at all…I am so pleased to listen to some of the new(er) things in my iTunes that I hadn’t even been able to approach before…to listen and think, “Yeah, I’d really like to play that.” Italy is interesting, too…there isn’t as much attitude surrounding music here as there is in the US right now, or Oklahoma, even. I love Oklahoma, and I love the music scene there, but there are tastemakers at work in Oklahoma, just like there are everywhere else, and sometimes I wonder if there’s really room for all of us in the new world of the growing Oklahoma music scene.

I desperately don’t want to be bitter or resentful about that, though, and that is truly helped by the experience of this trip. I don’t want the root of bitterness to take hold in my heart in regards to anything, whether it be in regards to my work or anything else. I want gratitude, peace, joy, grace. I want all these things in abundance. And I very much want them even more after this experience.

I have to be guarded…because I believe that these things can be stolen away, if I allow them to be. Stolen by bitterness, fear…these things that I can fall prey to so easily. Here in the holy city of Rome I sit, and these things are clearer than ever. I can only hope they remain clear once I come home.

The glow of amazing experiences of people, places and things wears off so quickly, too quickly. I hope that these lessons I have learned in Italy, about gratitude, grace, fear, bitterness and music…I hope that these lessons do not fade once the glow of Italia grows faint. There is so much in those lessons that is about my life every day, everywhere, and not just about these amazing few days spent in Italy. Let me always remember.

Who is Mixtape Jones?

I am David. Leader of the band Dr. Pants. Husband/guitarist/sidekick of the phenomenal K.C. Clifford. All-encompassing musical entity of Weird Files. There are rumors going around that I have something to do with the music of Cracker & Cochise and Juicyfruit Jenkins, too (the two other artists on my label, Little Weasel Records), but there may or may not be any truth to them. I am a passionate lover of music, both creating it and listening to it.